Offender Management Bill

I am grateful for that intervention because it further reinforces my point. In essence, the critique is this: the Government are persuaded intellectually of the need to improve public services through the devolution of power and authority, to allow a thousand flowers to bloom and to empower local communities, but they are instinctively incapable of turning such rhetoric into practice. They talk the language of freedom, but they practise the actions of control. That is our objection to the Government’s proposals, and for that reason I shall not back down, as some Labour MPs have said that they are inclined to. My party will vote to frustrate the Government’s objective.